I interviewed two people, a current undergraduate student living on the Stanford campus and a recent alumn who currently lives near the Stanford campus. They had very different experiences with campus communities. The student only had experience using Slack and email to connect with the wider campus, while the alumn was involved on every social platform. Their best and worst experiences interacting with others on these platforms were also very different: the student’s experiences were limited to their dorm, while the alumn’s were based on buying products from students not just limited to the campus space. Neither had any central place from which to request general services, but for specific services, they said similar things. The services that the university provides for on-campus students seemed like a first choice, but they both had an attitude of saying that even if there weren’t a university-provided service, it wouldn’t be difficult to find someone out there who does what they need. The student did not seem interested in student-provided services since they have never needed them before, but the alumn—perhaps due to their wide social involvement and desire to promote local talents—demonstrated interest.
Student’s quotes:
- “I know where to go for everything I need, and there are emails that offer new things sometimes.” (Context: they were referencing a bike repair email)
- “I’m just happy I was able to help someone. They could have been in real trouble if I didn’t hear that notification.” (Context: as an RA, resolved a lockout for a drunk resident at 4am)
- Could this indicate that they might be interested in providing a service in the future? This person has a background in art. I didn’t think to ask at the time.
Alumn’s quotes:
- “There’s probably something somewhere. It wouldn’t be too hard to find.” (Regarding general services)
- When hearing of a hub for student-provided services, they lifted their brows and said, “That could be fun. Reminds me of an Etsy shop.”
- TAM
- The total number of US college students in Fall 2019 is about 19.63 million. This is prior to the pandemic, so we will assume that the vast majority of these students were on campus and that current numbers are close to this.
- SAM
- The number of college students who were on or near their college campuses in Fall 2019 is 16.81 million. The monetary value of the market would then be 16.81 million × the number of services requested per student × the profit per service.
- SOM
- We would scale down to the number of Stanford University students rather than the total population of US college students: 16,937. Perhaps we could also include UC Berkeley students, which total 45,057.
Our targets are college students providing services and college students in need of services. Here are some considerations we would need to take into account:
- Assessments of student service providers on campus
- Assessments of particular student needs on campus (e.g., hair services, tutoring, etc.)
- The cost of one student’s charge vs. the outside cost of a professional’s charge
Citation for the numbers: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_311.15.asp
